We must distinguish especially three stages: 1) the preparatory labors of Italian, French,
and Scotch-Irish missionaries; 2) the consolidating romanizing work of Boniface of England and
his successors; 3) the forcible military conversion of the Saxons under Charlemagne. The fourth
and last missionary stage, the conversion of the Prussians and Slavonic races in North-Eastern
Germany, belongs to the next period.
The light of Christianity came to Germany first from the Roman empire in the Roman
colonies on the Rhine. At the council of Arles in 314, there was a bishop Maternus of Cologne with
his deacon, Macrinus, and a bishop of Treves by the name of Agröcius.
In the fifth century the mysterious Severinus from the East appeared among the savages on
the banks of the Danube in Bavaria as an angel of mercy, walking bare-footed in mid-winter,
redeeming prisoners of war, bringing food and clothing with the comfort of the Gospel to the poor
and unfortunate, and won by his self-denying labors universal esteem. French monks and hermits
left traces of their work at St. Goar, St. Elig, Wulfach, and other places on the charming banks of
the Rhine. The efficient labors of Columbanus and his Irish companions and pupils extended from
the Vosges to South Germany and Eastern Switzerland. Willebrord, an Anglo-Saxon, brought up
in an Irish convent, left with twelve brethren for Holland (690) became the Apostle of the Friesians,
and was consecrated by the Pope the first bishop of Utrecht (Trajectum), under the name of Clemens.
He developed an extensive activity of nearly fifty years till his death (739).
When Boniface arrived in Germany he found nearly in all parts which he visited, especially
in Bavaria and Thuringia, missionaries and bishops independent of Rome, and his object was fully
as much to romanize this earlier Christianity, as to convert the heathen. He transferred the conflict
between the Anglo-Saxon mission of Rome and the older Keltic Christianity of Patrick and Columba
and their successors from England to German soil, and repeated the role of Augustin of Canterbury.
The old Easter controversy disappears after Columbanus, and the chief objects of dispute were
freedom from popery and clerical marriage. In both respects, Boniface succeeded, after a hard
struggle, in romanizing Germany.
The leaders of the opposition to Rome and to Bonifacius among his predecessors and
contemporaries were Adelbert and Clemens. We know them only from the letters of Boniface,
which represent them in a very, unfavorable light. Adelbert, or Aldebert (Eldebert), was a Gaul by
nation, and perhaps bishop of Soissons; at all events he labored on the French side of the Rhine,
had received episcopal ordination, and enjoyed great popularity from his preaching, being regarded
as an apostle, a patron, and a worker of miracles. According to Boniface, he was a second Simon
Magus, or immoral impostor, who deceived the people by false miracles and relics, claimed equal
rank with the apostles, set up crosses and oratories in the fields, consecrated buildings in his own
name, led women astray, and boasted to have relics better than those of Rome, and brought to him
by an angel from the ends of the earth. Clemens was a Scotchman (Irishman), and labored in East
Franconia. He opposed ecclesiastical traditions and clerical celibacy, and had two sons. He held
marriage with a brother’s widow to be valid, and had peculiar views of divine predestination and
Christ’s descent into Hades. Aldebert and Clemens were condemned without a hearing, and
excommunicated as heretics and seducers of the people, by a provincial Synod of Soissons, a.d.
744, and again in a Synod of Rome, 745, by Pope Zacharias, who confirmed the decision of Boniface.
Aldebert was at last imprisoned in the monastery of Fulda, and killed by shepherds after escaping
from prison. Clemens disappeared.^116
(^116) Comp. besides the Letters of Boniface, the works of Neander, Rettberg, Ebrard, Werner and Fischer, quoted below.